72 ously, when Julia went to find Cam- eron in the bathroom she made up some story about having kissed him- she was lying," Jerry Zucker, the film's co-producer, says. "We reshot it so she says to Cameron, 'He doesn't love me, he loves you.' She has tears in her eyes, it's hard for her-the audience buys it." The test audience also hated that Julia Roberts ended up at the wedding in the arms of a brand-new love inter- est-people wanted to see more of Ru- pert Everett as her gay friend George. "Ron did a great repair job," John Calley says. (Bass rewrote the ending so that Everett arrives as a surprise and Roberts dances with him.) "The audience told us that the relationship between Rupert and Julia was what mattered. They told us not to worry about setting her up, because they weren't worried." Clearly, Julia Roberts-Julia Roberts, after all- was eventually going to be able to find love with a heterosexual man. In Hollywood, the audience ends up as the ultimate studio boss. Bass argues that "it's not that there's good stuff, which never sells any tickets because it's so good, and then there's commercial stuff which panders to everybody's low- brow taste, and that's where you make money: Usually, something is successful because people like the thing that is good about it. Of course, 'Gods and Monsters' will never sell as many tickets as rmageddon.' Those are different markets. Within each market, though, everybody wants quality." But quality in the blockbuster mar- ket, where Bass usually works, is often gauged by a film's profits. In that market, idiosyncrasy of vision is not encouraged. The very qualities that help Bass to get his movies made-his reputation for providing a structure that others can play around with, his eagerness to please- often conspire to defeat his ultimate h I " s " .c . B ' opes. n tepmom, lor Instance, ass s themes were interpreted very broadly by the director, Christopher Columbus. Bass admits that "some of my humor is cheesy and cornball, reaching out to be popular," and that "the ending is a ten- handkerchief affair, though I think it d h " ( " 0 K " h dd "., earne tat. .., e a s, Its not Shakespeare," and, "O.K., so don't give us an Academy Award.") But he still believes that some of his self-esteem- affirming vision shines through. John Calley waves away the very idea that a screenwriter could impress his voice and vision upon the public. "Good scripts resemble one another, and not even the Writers Guild can distinguish one style from another," he says, drink- ing beef tea in his huge office and gaz- ing out benignly at his private sunporch. "Everybody is rewritten by everybody so it flows and is intelligent. It's just not a literary medium-it's a suggestion of " ,,":' , hn JJ > U IJ ." ..... ", ):. , , , . . .;.... .) .: . ."...- ;::" . :. ( " , .. -. -.. , , , , , .. " , it ",." ,,", p " " ,.. "..",h ',-'-' " ' '''',n"""", , ;, :y .;;: :} 1 "'" \iJ ti \t. d ':! UsI ' "' ill ' ',' I ' ' .... .-' .". . -.., - '."- : --' ' . -::. :' :. :::'" ," ". . rwrn , ': , """' , ' , """"''''''''''''''':::':>',,':+<0, ", uilLl mID" "" , ""',:,""""""'/"',: , " ' ;""" . ''',...,'' , '.., ." .. . ,:--0:, ,:",,: " ,.,:,;;. , " . ""0 -;.' . .".. :" , , '. "." '", ,"-. ... : . . . . ;'. . : .:: :..,: ....:: . ": .:. .... " . '-'.:. .:..-,-:: ;Z tf t . "4f,'.f }...L.--- . ' '.'-:' '::.:, :: ;:;. ;; : ''Remember when I said I was going to be honest with you, Jeff? That was a big, fat lie. " THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 24. 2000 a visual medium, and as such wildly in- adequate." Studio executives approach mainstream movies as they would a stew, with a battery of cooks constantly tasting from the pot as the refrigerator is emptied of leftovers. Mter the "Step- mom" preview, Calley told Bass, "Great film. We didn't even need the' cancer." " T HE Ron Bass story is wonderfully instructive," the screenwriter Dennis Klein says, "because it reveals the thudding dead-endedness of the job of screenwriter-a eunuch who delivers Cokes and pizza to the lus11. villa of the actual moviemakers, whose orgy he glimpses through billowing curtains." It turns out that even Ron Bass, the two-billion-dollar man, has to suffer the routine indignities of the screen- writer. Last spring, Bass finished up "The System" as a buddy film for Will Smith, but Smith told him the charac- ters seemed too smart, and the project was put on hold. Bass then turned to "Bad Boys 2," a sequel to the Martin Lawrence cop caper, and suddenly, he told me worriedly, "here's Martin in the hospital with his accident, or illness, or whatever we're calling it." (The erratic star had gone into a three-day coma after jogging while wearing heavy clothing.) "Passion of Mind," from a Bass idea dear to his heart, was supposed to open last fall, but its release kept being delayed. "Paramount Classics is waiting for Demi Moore to be able to publicize the movie," Bass said gloomily: "She's the star, so we sit around waiting and coaxing." He was eager to tackle a new draft of "Memoirs of a Geishà' for Steven Spiel- berg, but first the director had to make "Minority Report," with Tom Cruise, and that couldn't start until the actor had finished "Mission: Impossible 2," which had run well over schedule in Australia. In the meantime, Billy Bob Thornton seemed likely to sign on as the director of "The Shipping News," another Bass adaptation. Bass knew that Thornton did a lot of his own writ- ing, and might just toss Bass's draft, of which he was extremely proud. "Will I get to meet the great man?" Bass won- dered. "I may be hanging with Billy Bob, or I may be fired and just see him at the première." "Couldn't you just call him and ask about his plans?" I asked. "Call him?" Bass said incredulously.